


With Her Sweetened Breath, And Her Tongue So Mean

by HecoHansen31



Series: The Last Kingdom Modern AU [4]
Category: The Last Kingdom (TV)
Genre: (also me highly projecting my feats on brida), F/F, Internalized Misogyny, Mention of Abusive Household, Mention of sex, Modern Era, Problematic Childhood
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-02
Updated: 2020-08-02
Packaged: 2021-03-05 20:29:22
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,946
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25671349
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HecoHansen31/pseuds/HecoHansen31
Summary: After the break up of her life, Brida is thrown in a confusion that risk being extremely destructive for her heart, which never learned that love should be free and sweet and adorable... and not a constant struggle.
Relationships: Skade/Brida
Series: The Last Kingdom Modern AU [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1846891
Comments: 2
Kudos: 3





	With Her Sweetened Breath, And Her Tongue So Mean

Brida hadn’t known much about love, but she knew one thing for sure about it.

Love was a constant battle and struggle.

As a child in foster care, she had seen this happening continuously.

When you were raised in foster care, you weren’t a child, you weren’t part of the family, no matter how much the people in it treated you better than the previous one you had been pushed in.

You were simply there because your ‘parents’ got paid a special extra to take in ‘rascals’ like you and although her latest and most-lasting family, who had later adopted her alongside another boy, had been absolutely the best she had ever known…

… the sensation of having to fight desperately for their approval had been constant.

And it hadn’t helped in the slightest Brida to grow with a notion that love was free and shouldn’t be something that is bargained or bought with small gestures and such.

That it was much more than being the perfect girl, the one that was different from everybody else so that she could stand out above everyone, surviving through high school successfully and then moving in university with a law enforcing degree, becoming the lawyer her ‘parents’ had always wanted her to be.

She had harbored so much pain and hurt through those years still, feeling like there was this desperate rush in her to show everybody how truly strong she was, how successful she could be.

Almost to thank them for having chosen her.

Eventually she had gotten to a breaking point.

She had discovered at twenty five that she couldn’t have children, a problem with her ovaries due to the starvation she had suffered as a child, before she was taken in by her ‘beloved family’.

It was something that had hit harder Brida’s partner and fiancé, Ragnar, her first love, than her, truly.

She remembered his desperation for it and how well she had faked being disappointed in her ‘unworking body’ but internally, she was glad.

She had wanted to become a mother… eventually.

But not at that age.

Not when she had fought so hard to obtain everything that she now had, wanting to enjoy the freedom of being without duties.

Eventually she would have liked to become a mother.

But did she want to become like her ‘parents’?

Pushing her children into choices that weren’t theirs and forcing them through the notion that all pain and suffering was worth it if they brought you to his ending, and most importantly that all this heartless conquering would be one day what they would have given to their children.

What kind of children would she have raised?

Heartless monsters like her.

So, when she had found Ragnar’s ring left on his side of the bed with a note, she had been strangely euphoric.

No wedding to prepare, no people to disappoint because of her choices and no children to think yet.

Although her eyes had leaked tears for a few minutes, she had then danced around the sitting room, like a crazed woman, feeling like for once, she wasn’t loved, but she wasn’t also struggling to fight through a life she didn’t want and through a love that hugged her too tight to be truly free.

Still the following months had been hard on her.

And confusing.

It had then suddenly hit her how truly alone she felt and she had to admit that she hadn’t gone through the best of remedies to soothe the ache of freedom, still burning in her chest, mostly using the taste of whiskey, which matched perfectly the fire in the pit of her stomach.

An ache that she didn’t know how to use, and it burned her to the core, with a coldness that risked freezing her heart and make her mind go crazy.

And after one of these awful nights, she had woken herself in the arms of a pretty blonde thing.

The surprise had paralyzed her in the bed, meanwhile the woman onto her, obviously half-naked, moved lightly on her bare chest.

She hadn’t known what to do.

Had she seriously just had her first experience with a woman?

Was she seriously too drunk to remember it?

What the heck had she put her body through?

And then the beautiful blonde thing had quirked an eye open at her, a smirk on her face, almost playful and yet it held so much darkness that Brida wondered whether she was under some kind of enchantress and about to be offered to some dark god.

Later on, she had discovered that Skade, that was the name of the girl in whose bed she had ended up, was indeed a witch, but she hadn’t put any enchantment against her.

‘It goes against my professional values’ she had commented, meanwhile she wore back all her clothes, discarded through her room, designed by an elegant emo phase that Brida almost would have appreciated, hadn’t it been one of the many things she had stopped herself from having.

Emo kids, back in high school, according to her brother and boyfriend were creeps and although Brida had admired their bravery and loved their songs, she had just repressed herself through showing any sign of her interest.

‘… and what about taking strangers in your bed?’ she hadn’t meant to sound so bitter, but she had to admit that she had never had an experience like that and all her reactions right now were based on the ‘flight or fight’ thought ‘… is that something that you do usually?’.

Should she do some test for STDs?

She wasn’t a saint and she had had her own experience before becoming Ragnar’s stable girlfriend (looking back to it, she also realized the title was horrendous) but she hadn’t ever been one to ‘stray around’, since she had been taught that it wasn’t something ‘people like her’ did.

She was still wondering what ‘people like her’ meant, because if it was some way to describe the middle-class behavior her ‘parents’ and ‘friends’ followed, she had to say she had never belonged with them.

‘Oh but, my dear Brida, we aren’t strangers” Skade commented, licking her lips with the face of a cat who had stolen milk from her owner.

A cunning expression that almost made Brida reason why she might have been interested in the blonde witch

‘… we talked a bit at the bar, although you were utterly smashed, and you commented about how you had never experienced with girls in college… and I thought about suggesting a little experimentation…’.

Gosh, what had seriously gone through her mind, the previous night?

‘… a little experimentation with a stranger?!’.

Brida should have seriously stopped making questions and gotten the fuck out of there, before she got probably killed by some kind of Mason fangirl.

She had seen too many ‘Criminal Minds’ episodes to know how this would end up.

But blondie over there didn’t seem to acknowledge her uneasiness as she moved to put on a ruined band t-shit on, something metal and Nordic.

Something that didn’t surprise Brida in the slightest

Skade then moved to collect her ruined thighs, probably a gift from Brida.

She had never had too much patience with those things, always ending up with various ruined pairs of thighs because she just didn’t have the patience to roll them up properly.

She had then pushed herself to solely wear pants.

‘You are a tomboy!’ had thrilled her mother with disappointment when she had told her that and Brida had pushed that to become her new identity, throwing herself away completely from all the girly thing she liked and pushing herself to constantly repeat ‘I am not like the other girls’.

She wondered if it was more a compliment or an insult.

Either way that phrase had fucked her mind up greatly.

‘…again… I don’t think that you are a stranger…’ had commented Skade, her voice was suddenly deep and any trace of amusement had left it, and although Brida should have seriously run out of the fucking building, she had turned around, halfway through adjusting the bird nest that her hair was in an high ponytail.

Skade had immediately caught her eyes and she had known that she had spoken the truth.

‘… I do think that I have known you before’.

It had sounded extremely creepy.

And yet she had found the way right back to that apartment the following week, not knowing how much truly it was the alcohol’s blame since she had kept herself sober that night, having Skade guide her through a ‘sober exploration’.

‘Nothing happened last time’ she had commented and Brida knew that she spoke the truth, this time ‘… you just seemed very lonely, and drunk… and you got naked and tried to actually “have your way with me”…’.

‘I don’t do this often’ Brida hadn’t know why she had had to specify it.

Although she had never been a prude with sex and such, she had always stuck with guys, simply.

And even back then, it hadn’t like she had explored much, having had two boyfriends for most of her life, one of them having become her best friend, although it went through periods.

Meanwhile Ragnar was still somehow an interrogative point.

A bracket left open.

She knew that she had hurt him, somehow.

But she didn’t feel in the slightest guilty for it.

And yet she knew she should.

But here she was, again, in a stranger’s bed.

A stranger that said they knew each other from some kind of past life.

She had seriously reached a new low.

Even more because, as she got to know Skade, she soon realized what a pain in the ass the woman was, hysterical at times and definitely manic in others.

And yet, she felt good with her.

Much better than with everyone else she had been all her life.

And suddenly their meetings weren’t simple exploration (although Brida had understood that she certainly wasn’t as straight as she had thought herself to be) not only because they’d have breakfast in the bar in front of Skade’s apartment (at first Brida had tried hiding herself, but right now she honestly didn’t care who saw her).

But Skade had started casually dropping small gift of protection in her clothes, something that she had dubbed as straight up psycho at first and then had slowly classified as a nice gesture and now she pinned the small objects in every coat she owned.

‘They just bring luck’ she had muttered as a justification, as Skade smirked back at her.

‘Oh, of course’ she had teased her, but it had felt so soft and yet so light that Brida could allow herself to be ‘undermined’ by her for once.

It had felt strange falling in love with Skade.

She had known deep downm she should have been afraid of it, but yet, it was so natural and it wasn’t a struggle for once, although there was plenty of teasing between them, mostly from the blonde woman.

But it felt harmless.

It wasn’t a struggle.

It was a power exchange.

And yet it didn’t lessen the competition between them.

Mostly for questions such as the anniversary presents.

She knew that Skade was quite the sneaky bitch when it came to this, going as far as go through her thing to catch a glimpse of her plan so that she could outmatch it, something that Brida had never allowed her to do, since she wanted to always come up on top.

Old habits died hard.

And yet it always felt like a playful competition.

There wasn’t any prize in this one.


End file.
